Building Participation Networks: From Taiwan’s Model to Scotland’s Initiatives

When we talk about open government, the focus usually falls on the relationship between the state and society: publishing open data, enabling citizen participation, improving government accountability, and using technology ethically. These are all essential pillars. But they often overlook a quieter, internal challenge—how government collaborates with itself. Across the world, even the most ambitious participatory processes can hit a wall once the public conversation ends. Citizen input might be collected, discussed, and celebrated, yet never meaningfully implemented. This “participation fatigue” isn’t caused by a lack of good intentions; it’s usually the result of fragmented institutions where no one has the mandate or capacity to carry engagement outcomes across ministries. Taiwan recognised this gap early, and offered a solution that has been less technical but more human. A network that brings policy teams together and converse about internal operations that enable citizen participation and build civil services’ participation capacity gradually, steadily and visibly. As the team grew and staff traveled and worked in multiple countries, the training has also come to international stage, customising to respective contexts.

Taiwan’s Participation Officers Network

In 2016, Taiwan launched an experiment that has since become a model for internal collaboration in government: the Participation Officers (PO) Network. Coordinated by the Public Digital Innovation Space (PDIS), this network brought together civil servants from 32 ministries with a simple idea: participation shouldn’t be the job of one office, nor should it sit outside the policymaking process. It should live within government, owned by the people who shape policy daily. Participation Officers meet regularly to exchange ideas, map cross-cutting issues, and work as a collective on how public engagement should be designed and delivered. This structure reduces silos and helps ensure that ministries with overlapping responsibilities are actually talking to one another. The result has been more joined-up policymaking, a stronger culture of collaboration, and what has been called “the missing half of open government.” In 2017, the model became a government directive, formally defining roles and responsibilities. This institutionalisation has allowed the network to continue operating sustainably to this day.

Why it works

The missing half is internal openness: how governments organise themselves to share information, collaborate across silos, and ensure citizen input is translated into coherent, joined-up policy. Without this internal culture and infrastructure, public participation risks being fragmented or ignored. Taiwan’s PO Network addresses this by giving civil servants structured ways to collaborate across ministries, build trust internally, and embed citizen voices into policymaking. In other words, it doesn’t just invite citizens in, it helps government organise itself to listen and respond effectively. Three key conceptual elements were designed strategically to make the mechanism work: cadence for engagement creation, clear empowerment structure, continuous capacity building.

• Cadence for engagement creation Participation officers act as the go-to-person for colleagues in their policy teams when a policy calls for inputs from wider engagement, and proactively scout for topics from policy teams that would benefit from collaborative efforts across multiple ministries or departments. They meet regularly and convene in large and small group conversations for idea exchange and decision making. The public engagement topics they pick every month not only present to the public the eagerness for the government to listen and gain trust from the citizens, but also serve as the foundation for constant internal, cross-team collaboration and delivery.

• Empowerment structure Participation officers are recruited with a careful balance of capacity and strength that collectively forms the network. Considerations were given in whether POs in one ministry could together influence meaning change, as well as whether the skillsets of all POs across ministries can complement each other and support cross-ministerial or cross-department collaboration.

• Capacity building Participation officers are the key champions in government space that champions the ethos of participation. They communicate with their colleagues and always actively look out for opportunities for participation. They also are the ones equipped with the core competencies for participation: facilitation, translation and summarisation.

In short, a Participation Network strengthens participation through growing a network of champions experience both in their portfolio and what citizen participation could offer. The mechanism behind requires careful initialisation and curation, in the lead up to establishment and institutionalisation in the long term.

That is exactly what we are working on with the Scottish government.

From Taiwan, New York, to Scotland

CrownShy’s team members began collaborating internationally as early as 2018 with a training workshop in New York, organised by the g0v network. It was recorded as the first time that the Taiwan Participation Officer model was shared abroad by the PDIS team.

Today, CrownShy is working with Scotland to establish a similar internal network — currently nicknamed Participation Champions — with the first recruitment and bootcamp planned for next spring. Alongside this, our platform Comhairle makes it easy for policymakers to design and execute flexible participation workflows. Built on the best open-source tools available, Comhairle supports organisations in moving beyond one-way consultation toward genuine, two-way dialogue.

In addition to the platform, we provide tailored participation capacity building training and advisory support, helping teams build the skills and confidence needed to embed meaningful engagement into their everyday work. We are extremely grateful for this opportunity working with an open minded civil service closely and push the boundary of digital democracy!